Lucy is now six and a half years old. She’s certainly showing the signs of ferret old age, but with the help of regular steroid injections she has quite a good quality of life.

We had to have Same Same put to sleep yesterday morning. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in May 2009 and was only expected to live a few months. However, he did extremely well on prednisone for far longer than that. At the end of November last year he could still get himself upstairs with no assistance, even though he’d lost a lot of weight and was swollen with fluid by then. He continued to deteriorate slowly but as late as Sunday (13th) night he was moving around, eating and drinking. On Monday morning I found him lying completely flat in his cage unable to move, his swelling was noticeably bigger than the night before and he felt cold to the touch. We took him to the vet who said he had fluid or cancer growth in his lungs that was preventing him from breathing properly and advised us to have him put to sleep straight away to end his suffering.

When the ferrets were young I used to complain about the smell, the biting and the time they took to look after. They are not easy pets. But they found their way into my heart and we had so much fun. We’ve still got Lucy but now that both Same Same and Different are gone, the house feels empty. I’ll miss Same especially because he was very cuddly and used to give Mr W and I little ferret kisses. This behaviour earned him the nicknames ‘Mr Kissy’ and ‘Dr Love’. However, he could be relied upon to bite absolutely everyone else, commonly hard enough to draw blood and leave a scar.

This is Same last October. He used to go upstairs to sleep in a spare duvet I’d left on the carpet with the intention of donating it to my parents.